Whispers In The Dark
by sorrow and bleus
Summary: Cassie wakes up in 1900 New York City with no idea how she got there. As she struggles to regain her memory and recall her past, with the help of the newsies, Cass slowly begins to remember where her scars came from.
1. Prologue

**~Author's Note: **

**Hey everyone! So this is my, what, third Newsie fanfiction. **

**It's my first time-travel fic, so I'm really excited about that! Basically what's happening here is the prologue, which introduces you to my OC, Cassie. She's living in the 21****st**** century, just in case y'all couldn't tell. **

**Unfortunately, the newsboys aren't in this chapter (tear, tear) but they will be in the next one, promise! **

**Anyway, PLEASE tell me what y'all think and read&review. **

**Hugs!**

**lovelovelove, Julianna.~**

_Prologue_

The phone's screen lit up, like the lights of a Christmas tree, bringing its own kind of gift. Carefully avoiding the teachers' gaze, Cass reached into her bag and slid the phone open.

_1 New Message,_ it proclaimed. Using her practiced fingers, opened the message, glancing up every few seconds at the teacher to make sure she couldn't see her. Cass shifted in her chair so that she was shielded by the back of the boy in front of her.

_Hey,_ said the message. Cassy rolled her eyes, and hit Reply.

_Hey,_ she wrote and punched Send.

Settling back into her seat, Cass folded her arms over her chest, practicing her best pouty look in the teacher's direction.

"So," the teacher was saying. "It's important to realize that Puritans wrote in the 'plain style,' which was they way that they spoke. It might seem ridiculous to us, but that was, in fact, their simplest form of communicating."

Cass sighed and glanced back into her bag, where the phone was glowing silently and unobserved.

_What's up,_ said Andrew.

_English, _Cass replied.

She sat up again in her seat, glancing around, bored, until her phone lit up again. Sighing, she opened the message, awaiting Andrew's usual one-word response and trying to think of a good way to change the subject.

_Sneak out, _he said. _and meet me behind the gym._

A trill of excitement fluttered in Cass's stomach and her eyes flew to the clock on the wall. Three minutes left in class. She drummed her fingers on the desk and put all her things into her backpack.

_K,_ she replied to Andrew. _See you then xo._

The teacher looked at the clock. "I'll let you all go early. Have good days!" she called to them as they all heaved their backpacks onto their shoulders and exited quickly. Cass strode quickly past all her classmates.

They didn't call her back, just simply stared hatefully at the back of her head and thought bad things about her. Cass rushed to her locker and pulled out her coat and keys before walking surreptitiously toward the end of the hallway and the glass door which stood there.

Slipping into her coat and then glancing behind her, she pushed the door open and skidded outside.

The world was covered in white snow and this added to the excitement bubbling in her stomach as she sprinted toward the gymnasium, her nose and cheeks stinging in the cold air and her curls flying behind her.

When she reached the gym, Andrew was standing leaning up against the exterior of it. She ran over to him and hugged him around the waist. He didn't hug her back; just waited for her to finish.

"Hey," he said, flicking ash from the end of his cigarette. Cassie stuck her hands in her pockets and looked at Andrew. He had short black hair cropped close to his head and his body was stocky and muscular.

"Hey," she replied.

"Listen," he said. "How would you like to take a little trip?" He grinned like this was a huge treat.

"Where?" she asked suspiciously.

"The city," he said, and she knew that he meant New York. They lived in Jersey. "I got business."

She snorted at his idea of business. "Whatever," she said. "Better than school."

He nodded. "Come on then," he said and started to walk away, feet crunching on the snow.

She trotted up behind him, annoyed that he walked away, and caught up with his steps. Her breath was visible as she exhaled. When they reached his car, a beat-up old black Pinto, she saw that there were two others inside.

"They're coming, too?" Cass asked.

Andrew grunted yes and opened his car door as Cassie walked around to open hers. Sitting in the passenger's seat was Nate, a muscular blonde boy, and in the back of the car on the driver's side was his girlfriend, August, who had smoky blue eyes and straight, honey-colored hair.

Cassie thought that August secretly hated her, but never let on. Cass opened the metal door and slid into the car's backseat and placed her bag at her feet.

Andrew glanced in the rearview mirror with his cold brown eyes before pressing on the accelerator. The car lurched forward (it was a piece of junk) and they made their shaky descent down the hill toward the highway.

Reaching it, they took the northern route, which was the fastest and sat through the traffic that was building up on the slick and snowy highway.

Cassie looked out the window as Andrew and Nate talked about who-knows-what (cars or something) and tapped her fingers on the cold glass, leaving little clear spaces in the fogginess.

She turned back to face front, fidgety for some reason that she couldn't place. She took out her phone and started playing with it, flipping it open and closed rapidly. August gave her a sideways glance of annoyance.

Cass sat on her hands and glanced over at August who sat with her legs and arms crossed, her dark jeans stretched tight over her legs. Cassie looked down at her own legs, clad in tight but faded jeans and splayed in an unladylike way. She curled them underneath her Indian-style and pulled her iPod from the back.

Resting her head back, Cass put in the headphones and put the player on shuffle. Her music lulling her into a stupor, Cassie promptly fell asleep.

She woke up with a jolt as the car slid onto the rumble strip on the side of the road. Her eyes whipped open and she looked at Andrew. He and Nate were now laughing uproariously at his ridiculous and dangerous driving habits.

Cass and August rolled their eyes at each other, the first exchange that they'd acknowledged during the whole trip. Cassie glanced down at her phone on her lap and saw that she'd only slept for an hour.

Curling her headphones around the iPod, Cass announced, "I'm hungry."

Andrew rolled his eyes angrily into the rearview mirror to look at her. She met them skittishly. "Do you _see _any place to eat around here?" he asked her.

"No," she said, sinking back into the seat.

"'I'm hungry,'" he mocked. "God."

Nate laughed and Cass turned her face so that her cheek was on the plushy car seat and closed her eyes again. August patted her arm consolingly and Cass opened her eyes to smile at her before drifting off again. She was used to this sort of thing.

She woke up, again, as they crossed under the tunnel leading into the city. And that is the last thing she remembers.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Waking with a start, Cassie found herself lying face-down in a gutter in a side-street. She was covered in perspiration and rainwater, and there was mud streaking her arms, chest and legs. There was dried blood on her face from a nosebleed that she'd experienced. She had a black eye and cuts and bruises all over her body.

Moaning softly, she sat up into a kneeling position, the knees of her jeans soaked through to the skin with muddy water. Her head pounded like a thousand spikes were being driven through it at once.

With one hand she felt her face, the swollen and tender skin aching with the slightest touch of her fingers.

Hauling herself to her feet, Cassie stood up and looked around her. She was in the middle of an alley and the ground was wet with rain. It wasn't raining anymore, but the sun shone weakly through clouds clearing from the sky.

Slowly she made her way to the mouth of the alley and to the crowded street. It was packed with people; women hanging their laundry, men hurrying to their jobs, children darting in between peoples' legs, newsboys selling papers, vendors advertising their wares…

But something seemed off, she thought, and as she focused on the people she realized what it was: they were all wearing very strange clothes. The teenaged boys, for instance, weren't wearing pants that were sixteen sizes too big for them. No, instead, they were wearing modestly fitting khakis held up with…well, she couldn't believe it, but, belts.

The women, too. They didn't sport short tight denim miniskirts or circulation-preventing blue jeans; they wore long cotton skirts and shirts tucked into them with aprons on top.

But it was unmistakably New York City, even without the cars and buses and police sirens and global warming, there was no doubt, it was definitely New York.

Had the Amish invaded? Cassie wondered but she was cut off by a loud voice in her ear.

"Extra! Extra! Huge train wreck! Hundreds killed! Many devastated!" it said and she looked, startled, at a sandy-haired boy to her right who was sporting an eye patch. "Read all about it!" He looked around the street, a smile plastered on his face, rows of pearly teeth visible.

He turned to her and she gave him a bewildered look. "Buy me pape, miss?" He blinked into her eyes with his clear blue one.

"How much?" she asked, realizing as she did that she didn't have any cash on her. She felt her pockets. There was some spare change, but not enough for a paper.

"One penny, miss." He grinned at her.

Her mouth fell open. "A penny?" she asked. "That's all?"

"Well if you'd like to pay me more, I ain't gonna argue with ya," said the boy, grinning and winking.

Cassie pulled out a nickel, the smallest change she had, and pressed it into his outstretched palm. "Thank ya, miss," said the boy, handing her the paper and calling back into the streets. "Huge fiery train wreck! Read all about it right here!"

She shook open the paper and scanned it with her eyes. Later on she wouldn't understand why she'd wasted her time like that, having no idea where, or more importantly, who she was.

But luck was in her favor and after she read the article, in which a coal train had crashed and two people had died she flung down the paper in anger. Cassie spotted the Eye-Patch Boy in the crowd and tapped him on the shoulder.

He turned around, his selling face on, and was met face-to-face with a particularly angry Cassie, who was standing squarely with her hands on her hips.

"This." She held up the paper. "Is not what you said it was."

He grinned. "All sales are final, little lady."

He sold his last paper and stood looking at her. His eyes flicked up and down her body. "So, if you don't mind me asking," he said. "You got a name?"

She fell silent, her mouth clamped shut as he looked at her. "Um…" she began.

"Well?"

"I…I can't remember." He looked at her open-mouthed.

"Alright," he said. "We'll just call you…" He glanced around. "Hudson."

"Like the river?"

"Yeah." He smirked. "'zactly."

She shook her head. "Okay. Whatever."

He motioned for her to follow, calling her over his shoulder, as he walked into the crowd on the sidewalk. She fell into step with him.

"So," he said. "Where you from?"

She thought about it, racking her brain for any memory of her home. "I don't know."

He gave her a quizzical look, his hair falling in his eyes—er, eye. "What happened to you?"

His eyes again grazed her, this time taking in the muddied and bloodied and tattered clothing she wore.

"I—I don't really know," she admitted, looking up at him. She was starting to get scared now, a little bubble of anxiety forming in her stomach and shooting out into her fingers. "The last thing I remember was being in the car with my boyfriend. We were on the Jersey Turnpike, I think, and I was listening to Britney Spears—don't judge me—and I fell asleep." She took a deep breath before continuing, "And then I woke up just now."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," said Eye-Patch Boy. "Slow down. First of all, you were _where_ with your boyfriend?"

"In the car," she repeated.

"Okay," he said. "what's that?"

"What's what?" she said absentmindedly, looking up at the buildings which were gray and nondescript.

"A car."

She stopped walking and look at him. "You're joking, right?"

He shook his head, brow furrowed.

Cassie adjusted her grip on the newspaper and then looked down at it. "What is this, the Amish Daily Times?"

She scanned the title and the headlines, and then, with horror her eyes fell on the date: _March 14, 1900._

She looked up at Eye-Patch Boy with terror. "What year is it? Tell me I'm wrong, please, tell me I'm wrong."

"1900," said Eye-Patch Boy and Cassie's vision blurred black as she faltered.

"Hey." His arm supported her back and he led her over to someone's front steps. She lowered herself slowly. "You okay?"

She looked at him in amazement, her eyes blazing into his. "Am I okay? Am I _okay_?" she repeated. "Why, no, I am not _okay._ I woke up covered in dirt and blood and shit and I don't know my name and I don't know where I am and I don't know my own name and now you tell me that it's 1900?" She took a gasping breath. "No, sir, I would not say that I am in any way _okay._"

He stared at her. "Okay, let's get one thing straight. What year was it when you were in the cat—"

"Car," she corrected.

"—Car, with your boyfriend?"

"It was…" she trailed off. "It was 2009."

His jaw dropped open and after staring in shock for a minute before bursting into laughter. "No way," he said through fits of giggles. "You really had me going."

She looked at him without blinking, or breaking into a smile. "I'm not joking," she said darkly.

"Okay, whatever," he laughed. "Wait till the others get a load of _you._"

He pulled her up by the arm and she nearly tripped as he dragged her, her untied Converse sneakers catching on the sidewalk.

"Oh," he said. "Sorry." And helped her up impatiently.

"Where are we _going_?" she asked, annoyed.

"To the Lodging House," he said. "That's where all the newsies live."

She followed him breathlessly until they reached a small green and brown building with lettering over top that read _Newsboys Lodging House._

Cass followed him inside, the frayed legs of her jeans dragging through the mud. As she walked through the door, Cassie found herself in a dark, warm-looking room with a desk, behind which sat an old man who was examining a sheet of paper.

There was a set of stairs to the right and to the left and there were benches scattered in the room where numerous boys, all dressed like Eye-Patch boy, lounged, either sleeping, talking, or playing cards. Or all three.

Eye-Patch Boy bounded up the stairs to the left of the desk and Cassie followed him hesitantly, going at a slower pace. When they broke the top of the stairs, they were in a sort of bedroom, with a dozen bunk beds.

Boys were also lounged about here, stretched out on beds, smoking cigars and playing cards.

"Hey, you guys," panted Eye-Patch Boy.

"Hey, Blink!" called many of the boys.

"You'll never believe this girl—" he panted. "She's so funny. Go on, Hudson, tell them what you told me!"

They all looked at Cass expectantly, and her eyes widened, a blush spreading over her dirty cheeks. "Umm…" she trailed off, not liking the feel of their eyes on her. "Well, um, I woke up today in a gutter and I don't know where I am or who I am or what the date is."

They continued to stare at her, now with a mixture of pity and revulsion.

Eye-Patch Boy spoke up. "No, no. The other part. About the year."

Cass swallowed and turned back to the boys, shoving her hands in her gritty pockets. "Well," she continued. "The last thing I remember was driving down the road with my boyfriend—"

"You have a boyfriend!?" one of the boys said in indignation, throwing down his arms, dejected.

Cassie looked at him, a little scared. "Yeah, um, sorry. But I don't remember his name, so…"

The boy looked hopeful and sat up.

"Go on," said Eye-Patch Boy, annoyed. "Tell them! Come on!"

She looked at him and sighed. "The last thing I remember, it was the year 2009. And then I woke up, here."

Eye-Patch Boy busted out laughing into the silence, nearly doubled over in hysterics. Then, wiping the tears of mirth from his eyes, he noticed that none of the others were laughing.

"Um, Blink," said a tall boy in a red bandana. "I think…I think she's being serious."

Cassie was looking down at her feet and biting her lip nervously. Her fingers were behind her back, intertwined.

Eye-Patch Boy stopped laughing and examined her. She looked up through her eyelashes at him, pleadingly.

"Seriously?" he said quietly, slightly disappointed.

"Yeah," Cass mumbled hoarsely.

"Damn," he cursed under his breath. "Why do I miss all the fun?"

"Hey." Bandana boy smiled encouragingly at her. "This ain't so bad. You can stay with us till you figure out what's going on."

She looked up at him and gave him a small smile. "Hey, guys," he spoke to the others. "Give me and the girl a minute here. What'd you say her name was, Blink?"

"Hudson," said Eye-Patch Boy. "She couldn't remember her real name."

"Hudson?" repeated one of the boys, who was dressed smartly in a vest and matching shirt and pants. Classy. "As in the river?"

"Yeah," said Eye-Patch Boy.

The other boy stared at him. "It was the first thing I saw, okay!?" said Eye-Patch Boy defensively.

The other boy continued to stare.

"I only have one eye, okay!?" said Eye-Patch Boy, infuriated.

The other boy's face burst into a grin and he threw his hands up. "Whatever floats your boat…"

"Guys!" said Bandana boy loudly, jerking his head toward Cassie…Hudson.

They scattered from the room and when Hudson and Bandana Boy stood alone he looked her up and down before sinking onto the bed, one hand on the headboard.

"So," he finally said, his voice gravelly. "You really don't remember anythin' at all?"

Hudson shook her head.

"Well, the name's Jack. We've met," he said. "But I guess you don't remember that either."

"No," said Hudson sadly. "I'm sorry."

He shrugged. "Nice to meet you, then. For the second time."

**~Author's Note: **

**Millions of thanks to XScree-ScreeX for the review & to cailin baire conlon for favoriting. **

**I love you all. **

**Please read & review with suggestions, comments, etc. **

**Happy Halloween, lovers! **

**lovelovelove, Julianna.~**


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

**Author's Note~**

**First and foremost: thank you to the AMAZING people who reviewed and read my story; MushSpotgoil, Cailain Baire Conlon, X-Scree Scree-X, Myst S., Bekah, Matisse, KnownAsDOLL, Hedgi, , and S.A.M. Fonceca.**

**Anyways, I'm back! I've been gone for a really long time, I know, but I'm so glad that I'm writing again. It's what I love to do, and it makes me feel millions of times better. **

**I can't thank you all enough for reading, and reviewing, and favoriting. So please continue to R&R!**

**lovelovelove, **

**Julianna.**

The morning blurred around Hudson's face the next day as she struggled to take everything in. When she was awoken by a prod in the ribs from one of the newsboys, it was still dark out. Her eyes were clouded with sleep as she rolled over on her side and covered her face with a pillow.

The room was filled with action and much scurrying around as the other boys got dressed and ready for their days. Hudson groaned once more before throwing off the thin blanket that she'd slept with the night before. Her feet hit the cold hardwood floor.

Standing up, Hudson walked over to the nearest window, where she could see the faintest streaks of orange light glowing on the horizon. There were a few people in the street below; mostly merchants, with horses standing idle, attached to large wooden carts piled high with fruits and other goods.

"Come on," said a male voice coming from behind Hudson as a hand slapped her lightly in the stomach. Hudson jumped and turned around. It was Jack. "Sorry," he said. "But we gotta get goin'. We ain't got all day."

"Sorry," mumbled Cassie, spinning around aimlessly trying to find a place to take a shower. She wandered over to where a mass of boys seemed to be gathered. There was a row of stalls and in front of that some sinks.

Hudson entered one of the stalls, and turned around out of it almost immediately, her eyes wide.

"Ohh-kay," she muttered to herself, reminded of why it is always best to knock first. At the next stall, which was empty, she found herself in a small space much like a shower stall, except with no shower. There was a flat area which looked like a bench and a hook on the back of the door.

It was like the fitting rooms at the Hoboken Mall… Wait, Hoboken Mall? Hudson shook her head. For a minute, the name Hoboken had seemed familiar, but after a second it sounded strange and foreign. Like when you say a word over and over again out loud or in your head, after a couple dozen times it begins to taste strange on your tongue, like a different language.

Hudson left the small stall, feeling very foolish as she wandered around the place in a daze. Everybody was moving around as if rushed, trying to get themselves cleaned and dressed. There were boys sitting on the edges of their unmade bunk beds, pulling socks onto their feet. There were boys in front of the sinks splashing water onto their faces and patting themselves dry with towels.

Hudson nervously approached one of the sinks. There were only a few, so many boys had crowded around each. Noticing that there was no running water, and instead of pulling on a tap marked HOT or COLD, everybody was just splashing on water from inside the sink basin, Hudson stood politely in what she thought looked like the line to the sink.

Not wanting to be rude, she waited patiently for somebody to let her use the water, but she kept getting shoved past, regarded as if she wasn't there. All of a sudden, through all the shoving and hubbub, a familiarity came to Hudson. In her mind, now, suddenly, she was in a large room, dimly lit. There were multitudes of people there, swarming around her as she got buoyed back and forth between pairs of arms. Swimming into her line of vision, blurry, were toothless and wide grins, the smell of tobacco and sweat, and grimy hands and fingernails.

Carnival music seemed to be playing and it was hot, steamy, as Hudson sank toward the ground, her knees weakening and ankles loosening as she fell down, down, down. Even on the ground, she was shuffled from person to person. Now all she saw were ankles and feet, dirty shoes and muddy pants legs.

"Hey," said a voice, snapping Hudson back to the Lodging House, where she was still standing in front of the sink.

She looked in the direction of the voice. "Hey," she said sleepily. "What's up?"

Eye-Patch Boy chuckled. "Why are you just standing there?"

"Oh um," Hudson began. "I was waiting for the sink."

"Just push your way through," he said, "or else you'll be waitin' there all day."

He grinned at her. She returned the smile sheepishly.

"Here." He grabbed her by the arm, and she was momentarily stricken by how warm his hand felt on her arm. There were tiny electric tingles dancing on her skin where he was holding onto her. He shoved his way through a group of boys, attracting many What's the big idea?'s and a few shoves back.

He laughed and set her in front of one of the basins. "Thanks," she said happily, and gave him a little hug around the shoulders. Again, Hudson couldn't help but notice the way that the thin shirt he wore clung to the bulges of his arms and the way that she could almost feel his skin underneath hers when she touched him.

He looked a little shocked at this gesture. He flushed. "You're welcome," he mumbled bashfully, and scurried off.

Figuring that it was probably inappropriate for girls to hug boys in this time period, or that she had flashed part of her elbow, which the Amish found irresistibly seductive, Hudson brushed Eye-Patch Boy's shock from her mind and looked into the water basin.

A far cry from the clear, cool splash of water that Hudson had been hoping would cleanse her face of any acne-causing micro-organisms that had surely formed on her skin after awakening in the gutter and later a roomful of boys, what Hudson found in the sink was a dank mess. The water was dirty like used dishwater, and Hudson supposed that this was because she was one of the last to use it.

A pinched expression of disgust on her face, Hudson clenched her eyes closed and cupped her hands, wanting to get the worst over with. She drenched her face with the nasty water, whimpering a little as she came up for air and a little bit got into her mouth. She was having quite a time.

Spitting madly into the sink, Hudson must have looked like a drunk alleycat. She groped around on the shelf above her head for a towel and found one. Her fingers grasped on it and she gratefully dabbed at her face with it, taking a deep breath. Almost not wanting to look, Hudson lowered the towel enough that she could see it now that all of the water was out of her eyes. It was crumpled, but thankfully looked clean.

Hudson felt like it had taken her hours to get ready that morning, and the boys were starting to clear out of the room as sunlight slowly filtered in through the windows. She was reminded of Sunday mornings at her home—

Her home? She hadn't the chance to get caught up again before she was jolted by someone passing her. "Sorry," they called over their shoulder after her.

A little shell-shocked at all the shoving that was going on, Hudson stumbled back over to her bed, at the end of which she had lain a comb and a change of clothes that she had scavenged before falling to sleep the night before.

The shirt was tattered and becoming worn, but it fit easily onto her trim frame. Having always been a little bit thin for her age, Hudson's soft, virtually muscle-free body came in useful now. The shirt was just the right size for her. It was a dark green color, which went well with the masses of auburn hair milling around Hudson's face. The pants were boy's pants, more like trousers. They came up to her belly-button and buttoned quite neatly there.

Smoothing her hands over the front of her legs, Hudson tried to examine the back of her body, wondering if she looked plump in her outfit. Deciding that it didn't really matter, she took to work on the weighty task of combing her hair. Her hair was fairly long, reaching about to the bottom of her shoulderblades, and very tangled. Now that it was partly wet, it might be easier to comb.

Hudson sighed as she sat down on the bed, and felt another pang of regret that she was taking so long.

Fifteen minutes and one comb later, Hudson was standing in the doorway of the Lodging House, along with all of the other newsboys and girls. Hudson hadn't known that there was actually a place in the Lodging House for girls to stay, and suspected that her good friend Eye-Patch Boy simply had not had the heart to tell her that she couldn't sleep in such close proximity to her as he could so intuitively tell that she wanted to.

As the circulation bell started ringing, Jack led all of the newsies onto the streets. It was like a loud circus. There were already peddlers yelling out above the growing throngs of people, trying to sell things. While the streets didn't have the urgent, rushing feel that they did as Hudson remembered them, there were still hundreds of people occupying the dirty and cracked streets.

Hudson looked up at the sky, at the tops of the buildings where they were just at the helm of barely, almost touching a cloud. She looked down at her feet, clad in unfamiliar shoes, and at the mud caking the sidewalk. Her head started to spin, but she steadied herself by gripping onto Eye-Patch Boy's shoulder. The sidewalk seemed to move underneath of her feet, and the last recollection she had was of a arm under hers as her knees buckled beneath her and a movie reel began to spin in front of her eyes.

**Hey guys… I know that not a lot happened in this chapter, but I wanted to include a couple of good flashbacks. **

**Anywho, so I'm a little fuzzy on what I want to happen in the next couple chapters and stuff, so I'm taking requests/suggestions. It would be very very appreciated, thanks. (:**


	4. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:**

**Hey everybodyyyy, **

**This is kind of a short chapter, but the flashback makes up for it, in my opinion (:**

**Umm.. read and review? Kay thanks. Love you.**

**Julianna.**

**Chapter Three**

She was in a dingy motel room; there was a bed in the center of the room and beside it a small beaten table. There was a door attached to the dirty white wall on the left-hand side of the room which led to a miniscule bathroom. The carpet underneath her feet was dirty and stained, a dark grey color which helped to conceal most of what was there.

She was not alone. Andrew lay on the bed, covers kicked off, shirtless. He was snoring loudly. Cassie stood by the door to which led outside of the motel room, her backpack clutched in one sweaty hand. She slid the chain out from above the door and clicked the lock so it lay horizontally. Her hand gripping the doorknob.

A guttering groan from Andrew.

A gulp of bile as Cassie willed herself to leave the room, to run, to escape.

A mumbled and hoarse "What the hell?" from the direction of the bed.

The flash of color as Cassie spun around.

The sound of the doorknob turning.

The thump of weight as she was pushed to the ground.

The spurt of blood from her nose.

A muffled noise of pain.

Cassie scrambled to her feet again, hands shaking, backpack lying abandoned on the dirty floor.

"What do think you're doin', little lady?" Andrew spat at Cassie as she flattened her back against the wall.

"Let me go, Andrew," she said in a low nasally voice, holding her nose to stop the bleeding. It didn't seem broken.

Andrew's flying hand as he smacked her hard, neatly across the face.

The red sting of fingers as they collided with Cassie's face.

The eerie scraping noise as her body slid down the wall.

Leon's voice from next door: "Is everything okay in there?"

August's face at the half-open door, her blond hair framing her face, a shirt being pulled over her head. "Cass! Oh, my God." She looks over her shoulder desperately. "Leon!"

Cassie's eyes as they roll back in her head, and her head lolls to the side.

She lays flat on the ground and Andrew kicks her in the ribs.

She makes another small noise of pain and curls into a protective position, arms furling over her abdomen as she whimpers.

Much scuffling of bodies.

August's hands on Andrew's biceps as she tries to pull him away from Cassie.

Her hand as she claws at his forehead, trying to distract him by pulling her nails down his face.

He lurches back and elbows her in the face. She stumbles backward in pain, clutching her cheek in both of her hands.

"What the _fuck_," she curses.

"Andrew, man, come on," Leon says nervously, approaching Andrew as he continues to kick Cassie, who lies on the ground, still grasping her stomach.

Andrew backs away, out of breath, curses, spits, wipes the blood from his forehead.

Hudson gasped loudly as she was shocked back into reality. Her face crumpled in relief as she looked up into the face of Eye-Patch Boy. He grinned as she opened her eyes, glad that she was okay. They were sitting on the front steps of the Newsboys Lodging House. Her torso was slumped in his lap and his hands were supporting her like a sleeping child.

Hudson's head slammed upwards, and she righted herself quickly, mirroring Eye Patch Boy's sitting position.

"What was that?" she asked him, looking around at the strange, almost-familiar New York City. It was like looking at baby pictures of her parents or siblings—did she have siblings?

"You passed out," Eye-Patch Boy told her, and Hudson buried her face in her hands, her shoulders slumping.

Blink looked around awkwardly at the people milling by, not quite sure what to do to comfort the strange girl who was looking pretty defeated sitting next to him.

Taking a deep breath, Hudson stood up and wiped her eyes, looking determined.

"Come on," she said to Eye-Patch Boy. "Let's do some work, son."

She grinned at him, slinging an arm around his broad shoulders, a pirate smile. He smiled back—a pirate smile. By default, of course; I mean, the boy does have an eye patch.

**Oh, and please forgive the Elton John reference—I couldn't help it.**


End file.
